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Does having SNAP make people not care about food costs?

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skincarekathy

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Maybe I will be sorry I posted this, I don't know. I have had SNAP before for a short time, but I shopped same as I do now.

Anyway, I was at Walmart (why do I do this to myself!) picking up dried beans & rice & a gallon of milk ($1.78 by the way). Great Value brand beans, GV brand rice, I got a 4lb of generic sugar, and the milk was GV brand.

Lines were long. Cart ahead of me was ice cream, pop, giant boxes of corndogs, register candy, many boxes of Kelloggs cereal, Oreos, and whatever the premium milk there is (Deans maybe?), beer. Ran the card, came up short. What followed was a short review of the order and the milk and cereal were abandoned. Gal talked with her man about how now they were out of $ so "this better last." They did pay for the beer.

Anyway I wonder sometimes if the proliferation of SNAP makes people not care what food costs and that leads to stores raising their prices (my beans cost almost double as the last time I bought them). Sometimes it makes me annoyed and mad that I always have to say no to register candy and ice cream and pop and corndogs.

I don't know what I was really going for here. Doing that bit of shopping made me really sad. I don't mean to offend anyone. I will stop going to Walmart and keep my eyes on my own cart everywhere else.
 
I think it is an interesting point wondering ifthere is any correlation between food prices and the possibility that some may not (need to/want to/have to) care about how much they are paying for things. Interesting too that you mentioned corn dogs. Corn dogs are a wish list item for my kids. I almost got some at Doms IDK how long ago when they had that (was it $5) new item cat we were getting. There was a wrong tag under the corn dogs as a new item. It was a mistake so no corn dogs. Today I finally gave in and let my ds12 make some homemade ones for lunch (with my help) and then remembered how my my dh loves them and wants some too. How is it that corn dogs can be that expensive that I can have tons of food stockpiled and still be wishing for them?!?!
 
This reminds me of a show I watched a while back. It was about impoverished coal mining towns. Most did not have grocery stores. The people had very little access to fresh foods and healthier food choices. Most were living on Doritos and Mountain Dew. Very sad.
 
Slightly off topic but, why aren't your cupboards bursting with EE beans and rice :giggles:
 
Does SNAP work where you have to spend the benefits or lose some of them? I remember hearing that something worked that way. I have never had SNAP before (but I think I did some online calculator within the past year on it just to see how close we are to qualifying), but if this were the case I would think that I would buy the extra stuff with it if that's what it took to use it up - assuming there would be any extra????
 
casagrande said:
This reminds me of a show I watched a while back. It was about impoverished coal mining towns. Most did not have grocery stores. The people had very little access to fresh foods and healthier food choices. Most were living on Doritos and Mountain Dew. Very sad.
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I saw that show! It was VERY interesting. They ALL............every single one of them lived on Mountain Dew. This was in the Appalachians. It's like a 3rd world country (well maybe not that bad) up there.
 
casagrande said:
This reminds me of a show I watched a while back. It was about impoverished coal mining towns. Most did not have grocery stores. The people had very little access to fresh foods and healthier food choices. Most were living on Doritos and Mountain Dew. Very sad.
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i remembered seeing this too! even babies were drinking mountain dew out of the bottle.

In a way i would think if someone (govt) is giving you free money each week (month?) to spend on food, why would you care what stuff costs? It's not like you have to figure food into your budget like others do, and i going to feed my family or pay my electric bill? It's am i going to pay my electric bill or go buy those really nice shoes. Food may not be a thought becasue it's already covered.....
 
I think with the EE I made the mistake of buying canned beans. I would have been much better off buying dry. We have been bean hogs and they just didn't last as long as I expected them to.

As to the rice, I had EE rice in there but I wasn't vigilant, didn't repack it when I brought it home, and it got weevils so out it went.

Still making mistakes after all this time!
 
What is the difference between LINK and SNAP? I did try to look it up.
 
I also had SNAP for a few months, a couple of years ago.

The amount they gave me for my family of 6 was about 3+ times the amount I was spending on groceries at the time. Probably 4x or more, because that was when there were good CAT deals.

I kept shopping all the good deals, and stockpiled lots of stuff and shared with others. I kept extra $ on my card so that I was able to keep using it for a month or so after I was no longer eligible and they were no longer giving my family money.

I have a friend who was just approved for SNAP last week. She was laid off, and her husband works on commission as a Personal Trainer. They have 3 kids all in elementary school.

They have been very bad off, eating a soup kitchens a few times a week and using the food pantry, eating mostly canned foods.

They barely had food in their fridge, very sad once when I went to their house. I did give them some things but they didn't really want to take it.

Even though the fridge was bare, there were 2 cases of beer, Mountain dew and smokes for everyone.

However, even on their limited income before SNAP *and* I'm sure now that they have it, they are still sure to buy mom Mountain Dew nearly every day, protein powders to boost dad's Personal training nutritional plans, cigarettes for both.

A lot of people just *like* those packaged foods and would buy them with SNAP or with cash if they got a windfall.

A lot of people see it differently than *earned* money so they may treat it differently.
 
Barb09 said:
I wondered this too....but was too polite to ask.:giggles::giggles:
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Not me :lol:

I wasn't just being nosey actually. Kathy started this thread: http://www.couponerswanted.com/showpost.php?p=1208300&postcount=1

So I was partly wondering if they go through a larger volume of rice and beans, I thought we had a discussion about stretching your meat and I could swear that she talked about various recipes with more beans less meat. So I was just wondering if between early June and now what seemed like a "stock up" was now dwindled.
 
:shrug: You eat what you have. For us for a good part of this summer, that has been beans.

I would have been better off buying EE dry beans in the first place.
 
skincarekathy said:
I think with the EE I made the mistake of buying canned beans. I would have been much better off buying dry. We have been bean hogs and they just didn't last as long as I expected them to.

As to the rice, I had EE rice in there but I wasn't vigilant, didn't repack it when I brought it home, and it got weevils so out it went.

Still making mistakes after all this time!
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I would have bought more of some EE stuff and less of others if I had it to do over again. The EE "Nutrigrain" bars are identical and I blew through the 3 boxes I bought already.
 
icoupon2 said:
I would have bought more of some EE stuff and less of others if I had it to do over again. The EE "Nutrigrain" bars are identical and I blew through the 3 boxes I bought already.
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I'd have grabbed more books!!!!! I didn't realize they were going to be out near me for such a short time.
 
I also have stores that are not friendly to me standing there for an hour doing tx. I could only justify so many trips to Jewel to pick up at best 1-2-3 items per trip.

It's aggravating.
 
I get what you are saying, OP. I wish the SNAP program was run like the WIC program is. You see that in grocery stores. The WIC approved items. One thing we learned very early on with Ava's diet is that store brands generally have less fillers and additives in them. They are better for you (most of the time) and shopping the outer walls inside a grocery store is always better because things are fresher and less processed. It's those middle aisles that get you. (Of course, I'm not talking about produce, frozen veg, or pantry staples.)

Chips, soda, and processed foods are so very unhealthy. It is sad that there is a stigma for TANF users, and the learned diet is creating more of a problem than helping. Even with chips, some are better than others, and nothing beats cooking fresh meals.

I do wish some items were limited or expected to be purchased with TANF, like they are with the WIC program.

I have never been on or benefited from either program though, so I may not understand the constraints.
 
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-mountain-dew-mouth.htm

Dentists who work in Appalachia have coined a new name for the extreme instances of tooth decay caused primarily by drinking sugary sodas. They refer to the condition as Mountain Dew Mouth.

Mountain Dew Mouth owes its name to the carbonated soda Mountain Dew, a beverage produced by Pepsi Co. Although many other sodas contain significant amounts of sugar, caffeine and phosphoric acid, Mountain Dew contains one of the highest levels of caffeine of any soft drink. To mask the bitterness of the caffeine, the formula for Mountain Dew also calls for higher amounts of sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Many children and adolescents in Appalachia routinely purchase large bottles of Mountain Dew and take frequent sips. According to dental health professionals, this would be the equivalent of bathing teeth in sugar for eight hours a day.

Filling baby bottles with Mountain Dew and feeding it to young babies was also found to be a common practice. Some babies and toddlers have been diagnosed with Mountain Dew Mouth after dentists discovered 12 or more cavities in their first row of baby teeth.

Some experts suspect the sugary nature of Mountain Dew contributes to its appeal, and consequently to the increasing incidents of Mountain Dew Mouth. The higher caffeine levels in the beverage also provide a legal alternative to caffeine pills or anti-depressants.
 
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